• You should visit Maureen McHugh’s chart illustrating her “understanding of the process of writing a novel.” It’s a brilliant thing. And if you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend laying hands on Maureen’s collection Mothers & Other Monsters; more enthusing about it here. (Via that Bond Girl.)*

• As an extension of an article about the African literary scene in their July issue, Vanity Fair suggests additional African titles worth exploring, including Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. (I wish the main print article was available online but it’s not.)

• Bolaño Bolaño Bolaño!! Even if you thought you’d ODed on reviews of Savage Detectives, Francisco Goldman’s essay in The New York Review of Books is worth your time. See also the Mumpsimus on Bolaño, which includes a great list of related links. (First link via Maud.)

* I’ve only met her once, but Maureen played a part in one of my favorite conversational exchanges of the last few years. It was on a night she read at Malaprop’s with Kelly Link and Christopher Rowe. Mr. Tingle and Gwenda were in the audience with me, and after the reading, we all went across the street to Bier Garden.

The bar was noisy, but we had a nice big table, with me seated next to Maureen and Gwenda across the table. Maureen and I talked about her experience with Hodgkins (which she’s chronicled at her blog), and how it had left her with a heightened sense of the world’s fragility. “Sometimes,” she said, “I even find myself worried about bunnies.” Gwenda overheard the last bit and said in a very reassuring tone of voice, “Well, of course you do. Like little bioterrorists in fursuits, aren’t they?”